This is a comprehensive history of the profession and aesthetics of American automobile design. The text reveals how the appearance of vehicles became an integral part of the system of mass production and mass consumption forged in the struggles of US society. It traces the development of automobile design, from the first utilitarian cars around the turn of the century to the most modern of symbol-laden cultural icons. The author shows how the demand of working Americans for beautiful, stylish and constantly improving cars was a response to the deprivations of mass production. Combining a...

Culture, Class, and Critical Theory develops a theory of culture that explains how ideas create and legitimate class inequalities in modern society. This theory is developed through a critique and comparison of the powerful ideas on culture offered by Pierre Bourdieu and the Frankfurt School thinkers, especially Theodor Adorno. These ideas are illuminated and criticized through the development of two empirical cases on which Gartman has published extensively, automobile design and architecture. Bourdieu and the Frankfurt School postulate opposite theories of the cultural legitimation of class...

Culture, Class, and Critical Theory develops a theory of culture that explains how ideas create and legitimate class inequalities in modern society. This theory is developed through a critique and comparison of the powerful ideas on culture offered by Pierre Bourdieu and the Frankfurt School thinkers, especially Theodor Adorno. These ideas are illuminated and criticized through the development of two empirical cases on which Gartman has published extensively, automobile design and architecture.

Bourdieu and the Frankfurt School postulate opposite theories of the cultural...